THE OPEN ROAD WAS FAR BEHIND. The two men in
the truck cab with me had withstood foul weather, bad
food, and three and a half endless days of driving to make
an on-time 5 a.m. delivery of 171/2 tons of ripe strawberries
to the Hunts Point Terminal Market in New York City.
With an April dawn still an hour away, the men showed
more concern about driving the final two miles in this decay
ing section of the Bronx than in crossing any of the preceding
3,000 miles from California.
"Roll up your windows and lock your door," driver Crandall
Paulson told me. "This is a good place to get hijacked. It's a
real jungle."
"It's like I can smell this place-like I can feel it in my bones,
Thundering past Los
Angeles streetlights and
signs, Crandall Paulson
wheels a tractor-trailer
north to Watsonville,
California, to pick up a
load of strawberries. After
a transcontinental grind
over mountain, desert,
and prairie, he and co
driver John Talkington
will deliver their cargo
to New York City.
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